Transportation Infrastructure

As expected, a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure deal passed the Senate today by a 69-30 vote. That included 19 Republicans in favor, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. It came after centrist senators in both parties and the White House reached a long-sought compromise on the bill. It now goes to the House where it is expected to pass and be signed into law after Labor Day.

One part of President Joe Biden’s “think big” infrastructure package appears set to pass with bipartisan support. The other, more innovative, infrastructure spending deal could be pass as a go-it-alone Democratic spending deal. First, there appears to finally be a bipartisan deal on a new infrastructure spending package that is about half what the president originally sought in his $2.25 trillion proposal.

Entitled the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021, the Senate subcommittee said that the bill establishes a new historic baseline funding level of $303.5 billion, which would be allocated for Department of Transportation (DOT) programs for highways, roads, and bridges, and is 34% higher than the current surface transportation authorization, the FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) Act.

The future of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure is caught in a huge political battle largely over what counts as infrastructure. Democrats are united behind President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, which includes everything from highways and bridges to home care for elderly and pre-school for 3-year-old toddlers.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with two attorneys at Washington, D.C.-based Venable LLP—James H. Burnley IV, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and one of the nation’s foremost authorities on transportation law and policy, and Fred Wagner, former chief counsel of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Burnley and Wagner provided Berman with their respective takes on the current state of all-things U.S. transportation infrastructure-related, from both a policy and...

CAGTC Executive Director Elaine Nessle explained that, for years, there has been an ongoing conversation about insufficient levels of infrastructure funding across the entire transportation spectrum, specifically as it relates to freight-related infrastructure.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Phil Byrd. Byrd is well-accomplished in the trucking sector, as a past chairman of the American Trucking Association, the head of the Daseke Leadership Council, and currently the CEO of one of Daseke’s operating companies, Bulldog Hiway Express.

With the outcome of the election all but certain, at this point, there is now a pivot to the future, in many ways, especially on the freight transportation front. One area in which this has a freight transportation-related policy tone is surface transportation infrastructure, which was the focus of a webcast hosted earlier this week by Washington, D.C.-based law firm Venable LLP.

Despite intransigence from the Trump administration, John Porcari, a key member of President-elect Joe Biden’s transportation team, is promising a swift and smooth transition when the Biden administration takes the power levers in Washington on January 20.

Build back better? The freight transportation world certainly hopes so. Following his decisive victory, President-elect Joe Biden started receiving congratulatory messages from the freight transportation world.

While the National Football League’s season is ostensibly on the brink of shuttering, due to the issues related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the game of political football inside the nation’s capital remains alive and well. That was made more than clear in late September, at the end of the fiscal year, when the White House signed a one-year continuing resolution for the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the five-year federal surface transportation authorization, which was...

As the clock was ticking on the end of the fiscal year, with the immediate financial fate of the nation’s surface transportation authorization—the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act—set to expire on September 30, the White House stepped in and signed a continuing resolution today, which will run through September 30, 2021, to ensure that funding remains in place.

As the clock continues to tick on the current surface transportation authorization, the FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) Act, which is set to expire on September 30, 2020, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Peter DeFazio (D-OR) this week released text for a new long-term authorization, entitled Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America (INVEST in America) Act.

With the myriad moving parts related to the ongoing coronavirus, or COVID-19 pandemic, it has seemed that a future plan relating to a new long-term federal surface transportation authorization would remain where it has seemingly been for a while, on the back burner.

There will be no major infrastructure initiative during President Donald Trump’s first four years in office. Trump, who claims to be a “master builder” of projects big and small, will never say that. But Washington lobbyists and veterans of past infrastructure battles now are saying publicly what has long been whispered privately. There are several reasons for infrastructure inertia.